In “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”, bell hooks explains how black culture has been going through a process of commodification. According to the author, costumes, culture and history of the black has been turned into products and promoted in a way to increase consumption. hooks uses the term “cultural appropriation” to explain that this commodification is a way to seduce marginalized groups and minorities, making them feel as recognized as the dominant culture in terms of acknowledgement of its accomplishments. This takes place mainly due to all the segregation in which black people passed through in the past, so the dominant culture tries to pass an image of reconciliation and equality (hooks 26). “Commodification” is a concept used
In bell hooks’ “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, she discusses the portrayal and misrepresentation of poverty in our society and the methods behind the dilemma. In this excerpt, retrieved from her book Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (1994), hooks focuses on the negative effects of contemporary popular culture and its contribution to the negative societal views on poverty.
The costumes of the Halloween have intensely portrayed the black community in an upsetting manner. The costumes have often depicted the black community as superstitious and often compared them to zombies, vampires, and animals. The concepts appropriated are the superstitious nature of the blacks their depiction as less intelligent creatures. In contrast, the costumes depict the whites as knowledgeable, intelligent and upright. According to Savan, the media has greatly exploited the back culture with a mass advertisement from the corporations who get huge profits from the celebrations in the sale of costumes. Although an effort is made in connecting with the blacks, the idea behind it is not in understanding the backs and their culture but rather is an exploitative one. It had an adverse impact on the black community by degrading their esteem and status in the community. For many years, the political process also had been influenced by the same ideas and had ignored the black population in the political process (Belk,
Next, he discusses the break with traditional African-American culture. According to Frazier, the black middle class has abandoned the folk culture of “the black masses” in favor of shell of the middle class white world that rejected them. Therefore, the black bourgeoisie lives in what Frazier calls a cultural vacuum, disdainful of the culture of most African-Americans, dismissed by the white middle class culture.
“…it is said that there are inevitable associations of white with light and therefore safety, and black with dark and therefore danger…’(hooks 49). This is a quote from an article called ‘Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination’ written by bell hooks an outstanding black female author. Racism has been a big issue ever since slavery and this paper will examine this article in particular to argue that whiteness has become a symbol of terror of the black imagination. To begin this essay I will summarize the article ‘Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination’ and discuss the main argument of the article. Furthermore we will also look at how bell hooks uses intersectionality in her work. Intersectionality is looking at one topic and
The hour long lecture of Bell Hooks and Cornel West deemed to be one of the most informative lectures over the culture of African Americans I have listened to. It was not only amazingly informative, but Hooks and West touched on many subjects that we have already covered and are currently learning in class. These subjects include transgression, white supremacy, patriarchy, consciousness, racialized sexism, and what is very relevant in today 's current society, the privilege of whites in America. I would also like to mention that their lecture was intriguing mainly due to their close relationship with one another. This relationship provided comic relief and both professors were able to work together to provide different viewpoints on certain ideas, yet they were able to agree with each other on many of them as well. Because Hooks and West previewed many ideas and subjects that we have introduced in class, I would like to focus on their three major subjects; social
”Representation” is the way symbols are used to communicate within society to express ideas, which have certain meanings (Luther, 2012). African Americans in particular have been represented negatively throughout the course of history in a variety of different media fashions. Stereotypes of African Americans are frequently conveyed in music, news coverages, magazines, and even films (Lemons,
The most poignant finding is not that black and whites think differently about its meaning, but what emerged was the acknowledgement that Hip-Hop was created as a tool to voice the sentiments of the disenfranchised. This locates the birth of Hip-Hop in cradles of disenfranchisements, the hood. Hip-hop worked as a megaphone, a magnifying glass that candidly told whoever would listen about the hardships, injustice and racism faced by those living in American ghettos. It worked as a tool to tell the stories of the people living there in order to build empathetic conversatio...
hooks provides five main premises to support her claim. Her first point is that Lemonade is a commodity, just as the black female body has been a commodity from slavery to present day; therefore, Lemonade was not solely produced for the black female audience (page 1-2). Her second point is that there is a commodification difference in Lemonade because its intent is to challenge the current devaluation and dehumanization of the black female body by way of positively exhibiting diverse images of black female bodies. This commodification
In African American Studies/Literature I walked in thinking that I could be told nothing about African American culture or history because I’m African American. In some ways I knew that racism existed but I learned how it has been subtle in control the way we think. We have learned that colonization has not ended and that in many ways we are still being oppressed. In this paper I’m going to show how African American has used hip hop and black hair are two ways in which African Americans embrace their culture and fighting oppression. However, as we have review in many classes oppression is not easily escaped. So in this paper I’m going to show how cultural appropriation is used as a way of oppressing black culture. So this paper will be an expansion of what we have learned in the
Racism and discrimination continue to be a prevalent problem in American society. Although minorities have made significant strides toward autonomy and equality, the images in media, specifically television, continue to misrepresent and manipulate the public opinion of blacks. It is no longer a blatant practice upheld by the law and celebrated with hangings and beatings, but instead it is a subtle practice that is perceived in the entertainment and media industries. Whether it’s appearing in disparaging roles or being negatively portrayed in newscasts, blacks continue to be the victims of an industry that relies on old ideas to appeal to the majority. The viscous cycle that is the unconscious racism of the media continues to not only be detrimental to the white consumers, who base what they know about blacks by what is represented in television, but also the black consumers, who grow up with a false sense of identity.
The purpose of this study is determine why and how African American music that’s is so deeply rooted into the community is being culturally appropriated. This is a topic that has been the on the foreground of race for years. Activists and celebrities like Adrienne Keene, DeRay McKesson, Azealia Banks, and Jesse Williams helped bring the issue into the national attention. Most of the world or better yet the appropriators have very little knowledge of what the word actually means. In order to understand the problem we must first understand the word Culture and Appropriation. Culture being defined as the beliefs, ideas, traditions, speech, and material objects associated with a particular group of people. Appropriation the action of taking something
“Cultural appropriation refers to picking and choosing elements of a culture by a member of another culture without permission” (O’Reilly). For example, white people steal certain parts of African American culture. They exploit it, misuse it, and whitewash it. “Exploiting a culture deprives the culture of the credit they rightfully
In his essay, “On Being Black and Middle Class” (1988), writer and middle-class black American, Shelby Steele adopts a concerned tone in order to argue that because of the social conflicts that arise pertaining to black heritage and middle class wealth, individuals that fit under both of these statuses are ostracized. Steele proposes that the solution to this ostracization is for people to individualize themselves, and to ‘“move beyond the victim-focused black identity” (611). Steele supports his assertion by using evidence from his own life and incorporating social patterns to his text. To reach his intended audience of middle-class, black people, Steele’s utilizes casual yet, imperative diction.
Whips and chains have played an important role in Black American’s oppressive history. In the days of slavery, chains were used to dehumanize us, restrain us and keep us from escaping our oppression, while whips were used to reinforce the oppression and our inferiority as a race. Today, literal whips and chains no longer represent the oppression of Black Americans; they have been replaced with the drive to obtain modern day “whips and chains”, or simply put, material possessions- a new, slightly self-imposed slavery. This is evident in the unifying factor of hip-hop music, which glorifies a lavish lifestyle sometimes at the cost of morals, values, and self worth.
WRITE A COHERENT ESSAY IN WHICH YOU ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE USE OF BLACK ICONIC IMAGES (AND OTHER ETHNIC IMAGES) TO SELL PRODUCTS AS THE ECONOMY OF MASS CONSUMPTION EXPANDED IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY. YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO INCLUDE IMAGES IN YOUR PAPER.